There are several types of safety blood sampling designs available today. One such design is shown in a patent issued to Jagger et al. on Jun. 3, 1986 U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,744. This safety blood sampling device however that requires two (2) hands to operate or to cover the needle cannula.
Blood samples are also taken with syringes and there are also many safety syringes available. Some of these designs have a sleeve or sheath that will cover the needle after it has been used. Some typical designs with sleeves or sheaths are Z. M. Roehr et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,008,570, Z. M. Roehr U.S. Pat. No. 3,107,785, Bartner et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,895,633, G. K. Burke U.S. Pat. No. 3,306,291, Gyure et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,678, Winstead Hall U.S. Pat. No. 4,356,822, Sampson U.S. Pat. No. 4,425,120, Larson U.S. Pat. No. 4,639,249, Harbaugh U.S. Pat. No. 4,655,751, Strauss U.S. Pat. No. 4,664,654, Braginetz U.S. Pat. No. 466,435, Spencer U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,738, Milorad U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,739, Spencer U.S. Pat. No. 4,801,295, Poncy U.S. Pat. No. 4,816,022, and Hughes U.S. Pat. No. 4,840,619.
Other designs have a retractable needle such as Weltman U.S. Pat. No. 3,306,290, and Dent U.S. Pat. No. 4,392,859. These designs do not have a means whereby the needle is extended from the syringe and held in place in a positive and rigid position in order to first inject the needle prior to drawing blood or injecting the medication. Still other designs have methods of bending the needle to render it harmless after the medication has been injected. Most of these designs have one major purpose and that is to prevent the spread of infectious diseases such as aids, hepatitis, or other diseases from accidental injection with a contaminated needle into others after the needle of the blood sampling device or syringe has been inserted into a patient with the above mentioned disease. These various designs all work well to a degree, but they all fall short of their intended purpose during the act of covering the needle, or removing the needle, which requires two hands.
All of these designs require at least two hands to operate. The use of two hands to cover the contaminated needle is most unsatisfactory in that during the act of placing a second hand on the blood sampling device or syringe, the person holding the blood sampling device or syringe in one hand may be bumped and accidentally inject the needle into their other hand before it can grasp the blood sampling device or syringe. Other accidental jabbings or injections can happen in an ambulance where just as a person tries to grasp the contaminated blood sampling device or syringe, the ambulance can hit a bump in the road causing the person holding the blood sampling device or syringe to accidentally stick another person or themselves with the contaminated needle. The need has developed for a blood sampling device or syringe that will cover the contaminated needle with the use of only one hand.
None of these safety blood sampling devices or safety syringe designs are modularized wherein they can be used for blood sampling with a vacutainer assembly.